The purpose of this research is to examine the economic freedom (EF) along with its macroeconomic determinants impact on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow in South Asia, East Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and North Africa, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Sub Saharan Africa. We use Heritage Foundation economic freedom index data over the period of 1999 to 2018 and employ the stepwise multi regression on variables of business freedom, government spending, tax burden, government integrity, property rights, investment freedom, trade freedom and monetary freedom. The results show that EF has a significant positive impact in South Asia, Latin America, East Asia, North Europe and West Europe. However, for the Middle East and North Africa, East European and South European economies EF has an insignificant influence on FDI inflow.

Crop residue burning (CRB) poses a serious threat to the climate, soil fertility, human health and wellbeing, and air quality, which increases mortality rates and slumps agricultural productivity. This study conducts a pan-India analysis of CRB burning based on the spatial characteristic of crop residue management practices and analyzes the linkage among health, agriculture value addition, and regional finance using the simultaneous equation to find the causality and panel quantile regression for direct effect and intergroup difference. We discuss some of the alternative crop residue management practices and policy interventions. Along with in situ management, this paper discusses ex situ crop residue management (CRM) solutions. The ex situ effort to manage crop residue failed due to the scarcity of the supply chain ecosystem. Force of habit and time constrain coupled with risk aversion have made farmers reluctant to adopt these solutions. Our results show that financial viability and crop residue have bidirectional causality; therefore, both the central and state governments must provide a financial solution to lure farmers into adopting residue management practices. Our analysis shows that framers are likely to adopt the management solution (farmers have some economic benefits) and are reluctant to adopt the scientific solution because the scientific solution, such as “pusa decomposer”, is constrained by the weather, temperature, and humidity, and these parameters vary throughout India.

Purpose: This study aims to quantify the concept of Industry 5.0, with a focus on human-centricity in the manufacturing sector.Design/methodology/approach: The panel nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag method is applied to assess asymmetry and vulnerability in the food, textile, chemical manufacturing, high-tech and transportation sectors. The robustness of the results is tested using a panel Granger non-causality test and panel vector autoregressive models.Findings: This study finds that financial unions, fair internal markets, gender and youth participation are significant factors for human centricity in the manufacturing sectors. The NARDL results suggest that both the chemical and high-tech industries human participation are insignificant in both the long run and short run. The results of the food industry are significant in both the sort run and the long run.Research limitations/implications: Manufacturing sectors need to create sustainable employment strategies that lead to stable, enduring and satisfying jobs in order to achieve human centricity. Involve skilled workers in important decision-making processes and empower them with technology.Originality/value: This study differed from prior research in several ways. Firstly, it incorporates the social dimension as a control variable in the pursuit of I5.0 implementation across various manufacturing sectors. Secondly, it quantifies the human-centricity aspect of I5.0 within these sectors.